Dawn Marie can finally say she’s grateful WWE fired her, but that doesn’t mean she suddenly thinks the company was right to do it. More than 20 years later, she believes being forced out ultimately gave her the family life she never had growing up.
Speaking with David Otunga, Dawn explained that her recent WWE return completely changed the way she looks at that part of her life. She had packed away the “Dawn Marie” side of herself for years, and bringing it back initially opened up emotions she didn’t particularly want to revisit.
“I loved it. But I loved it so much that it made me sad, but I also hated it so much because it was bringing back things that I just pushed away that I didn’t want to deal with.”
Actually going through with the appearance ended up having the opposite effect. Dawn walked into the arena carrying years of unresolved feelings and says she left feeling like a different person.
“It was exactly what I needed to heal. I felt when I left that arena—I felt like new. That heaviness was gone. That self-doubt, that question, that this—that personal and professional, right? It was just gone.”
For Dawn, it finally gave her something she never got when her WWE career originally ended. She could actually close that chapter instead of simply having it ripped away from her.
“Like, it allowed me to be able to put the period at the end of my career that most do not ever get a chance to do.”
Doing it in Philadelphia made the whole thing even more personal. Dawn remembered thanking Fit Finlay and Shawn Michaels afterwards because she felt WWE had finally given her the ending she didn’t even realize she still needed.
“No, thank you, because you gave me the period at the end of my career that I needed and didn’t even know it. Like, I’m very grateful, you know? And so, yeah, it was awesome. It was awesome. I feel like it was able to close that door, you know? I was able to really, even though it was in my rearview mirror, I was able to say, ‘Okay,’ with peace.”
That closure also led Dawn to a conclusion she probably couldn’t have imagined reaching when WWE released her. Looking at everything that happened afterwards, she can now genuinely say she’s grateful she got fired.
“It makes me smile, you know, and I’ll be honest with you, like, after that happening I was honestly able to say, like, I’m grateful I got fired.”
She wasn’t saying it lightly either. Dawn explained that she grew up without the kind of stable family environment she later created for herself, including being homeless at 17 and living in her car.
“I was homeless at 17. I lived in my car. I never really had family. I never had that unit. I never had—it was never easy, you know? I come from the street, okay? I fell through the school system.”
Wrestling eventually became the place where Dawn felt like she belonged. But she now believes that if WWE had kept her around, she would have tried to balance wrestling and motherhood rather than truly experiencing the family life she had never known herself.
“What I’m saying is if they would have allowed me to stay during that time, I would have tried to do it all.”
For Dawn, being forced away from wrestling gave her something completely different to build. She got to create a home, raise her children and experience the stability that had been missing earlier in her life.
“And I would have never been able to really experience and enjoy family and my children. So, I was able to experience, like, home and, you know, creating a home, having my children, having stability and, like, unconditional love in my life.”
That doesn’t mean Dawn has rewritten what actually happened with WWE. She still believes the circumstances surrounding her release were wrong. Dawn said she became the first woman under that kind of WWE contract to become pregnant and claims that after telling the company she was expecting, she never appeared for them again.
“Not that I think it’s okay, you know. But at that time, they weren’t making it easy, you know. Well, I was the first woman to ever get pregnant in the industry. So, I was the, you know, first one to ever get pregnant under contract like that. And I got fired for it.”
According to Dawn, she informed WWE on a Tuesday. From there, she says she was kept off television before eventually being told the company had nothing for her.
“Mhm. Mhm. I told them on a Tuesday. I never was back again.”
Dawn also claimed WWE tried to remove her from the ECW reunion during that period. That was one part of her career she wasn’t willing to let disappear without a fight.
“No, they kept me off TV for a little bit and then they fired me. They told me they had nothing for me. Um, they even tried to take me off the ECW reunion. And I had to get my lawyers to fight that. But I fought them. Like, this was my journey.”
So Dawn isn’t suddenly saying WWE did her a favor by firing her while she was pregnant. She’s saying something a little more complicated: she still believes what happened was wrong, but she can finally appreciate where her life went because of it. After years of carrying that ending around with her, getting one more moment in WWE apparently allowed Dawn to finally put the period on it herself.
What do you make of Dawn Marie saying she can now be grateful for being fired despite still believing WWE was wrong to release her? Let us know in the comments.
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